![It’s the 21st Century, But New Pope Francis Another Pick Out of Ancient Era [Video], by Taylor Marsh
The change could have actually meant something beyond geography, but as my article proves, Cardinal Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, is not a symbol of change. Anti-gay, anti-women, anti-contraception… conservative on all social issues. Some things in his past are really quite disturbing.
(Catholics for Choice statement at the link above.)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/389a376f8b70154320a15f15be1a1f43/tumblr_mjniy0hE7c1qhlyvbo1_500.jpg)
The change could have actually meant something beyond geography, but as my article proves, Cardinal Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, is not a symbol of change. Anti-gay, anti-women, anti-contraception… conservative on all social issues. Some things in his past are really quite disturbing.
(Catholics for Choice statement at the link above.)
The reason why is conservative traditionalism and the religious fundamentalism at the heart of the GOP… (read why)
Pussy Riot sentenced to two years for — wait for it — hooliganism.
Trending on Twitter: Putin Lights Up the Fire… for protest, revolution… you add your own word to describe the injustice.
Punk rock once again rules, thanks to the women of Pussy Riot, who put civil disobedience to a beat and lit up the world with their message.
Photo Igor Mukhin.
“The problem is you’re sober.” – The Lives of Cowboys, Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keiller
I love the boys, I’m just sick of hearing them preach… (click the link to read on if you’re a woman rebel on faith issues, as I am.)
We in the United States, above all, must remember that lesson, for we were founded as a nation of openness to people of all beliefs. And so we must remain. Our very unity has been strengthened by our pluralism. We establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain, separate. All are free to believe or not believe, all are free to practice a faith or not, and those who believe are free, and should be free, to speak of and act on their belief. – Ronald Reagan, 26 October 1984
If John F. Kennedy had said what Rick Santorum said, highlighted on “This Week”, Kennedy wouldn’t have been elected president.
From today on “This Week”:
STEPHANOPOULOS: You have also spoken out about the issue of religion in politics, and early in the campaign, you talked about John F. Kennedy’s famous speech to the Baptist ministers in Houston back in 1960. Here is what you had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SANTORUM: Earlier (ph) in my political career, I had the opportunity to read the speech, and I almost threw up. You should read the speech.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHANOPOULOS: That speech has been read, as you know, by millions of Americans. Its themes were echoed in part by Mitt Romney in the last campaign. Why did it make you throw up?
SANTORUM: Because the first line, first substantive line in the speech says, “I believe in America where the separation of church and state is absolute.” I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute. The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and vision of our country.
First question is, who’s going to define “the church”?
As we found out recently, the Catholic Church and other conservative religious Americans, including Democrats, don’t believe the First Amendment protects individuals equally as it does “the church.”
That’s a very negative modern day development for free-thinking individuals.
It gives you an idea of just how far right we’ve gone since 1960.
But even as Reagan spoke the words he did above, it was Ronald Reagan himself who emboldened religious conservatives after what they saw as defeats in Griswold and Roe v. Wade, which is why Rep. Henry Hyde struck back with the Hyde Amendment before the Reagan era.
Democrats have contorted themselves to try to prove their righteous worth, as seen by religious conservative standards, which Pres. Obama validated when he codified the Hyde Amendment into the Affordability Care Act. Before Obama, it had simply been part of the budget, voted on yearly; with help from Speaker Pelosi, Democrats changed that.
When the political self-loathing class of Democrats comes up against attacks by self-righteousness Republicans, that’s when we get wild statements by elite cable yakkers like Joe Scarborough, because no one ever holds them accountable. It’s nothing to suggest, as Scarborough did, that mandating female deacons in the Southern Baptist church is the equivalent of Obama’s contraceptive mandate, because as Santorum, Gingrich and Romney have all charged, Obama is attacking religious freedom itself. The implication and framing of the argument against Obama’s policy is what’s important, right? Why argue the facts and the false statements being used to tip the truth on its head?
In fact, Pres. Obama is upholding religious freedom, not government intervention as Scarborough falsely claimed, but as Reagan himself said, as did John F. Kennedy, that no American is required to choose any religion and I would add, be second to the interests of any.
It’s fitting religious conservatives would miss the beauty of the First Amendment swinging both ways.
Rick Santorum is the embodiment of George W. Bush’s calamitous “crusade” language made manifest in political flesh. He is the polar opposite of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and any number of the other French loving American founders.
Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVII
[…] By our own act of assembly of 1705, c. 30, if a person brought up in the Christian religion denies the being of a God, or the Trinity, or asserts there are more gods than one, or denies the Christian religion to be true, or the scriptures to be of divine authority, he is punishable on the first offence by incapacity to hold any office or employment ecclesiastic al, civil, or military; on the second by disability to sue, to take any gift or legacy, to be guardian, executor, or administrator, and by three years’ imprisonment without bail. A father’s right to the custody of his own children being founded in law on his right of guardianship, this being taken away, they may of course be severed from him, and put by the authority of a court into more orthodox hands. This is a summary view of that religious slavery under which a people have been willing to remain, who have lavished their lives and fortunes for the establishment of their civil freedom. The error(1) seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have no authority over such natural rights, only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. If it be said, his testimony in a court of justice cannot be relied on, reject it then, and be the stigma on him. Constraint may make him worse. by making him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a truer man. It may fix him obstinately in his errors, but will not cure them. Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only. Had not the Roman government permitted free inquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced. Had not free inquiry been indulged at the era of the Reformation, the corruptions of
—(1) Furneaux passim.—
Christianity could not have been purged away. If it be restrained now, the, present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged . Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potato as an article of food. Government is just as infallible, too, when it fixes systems in physics. Galileo was sent to the Inquisition for affirming that the earth was a sphere; the government had declared it to be as flat as a trencher, and Galileo was obliged to abjure his error. This error, however, at length prevailed, the earth became a globe, and Descartes declared it was whirled round its axis by a vortex. The government in which he lived was wise enough to see that this was no question of civil jurisdiction, or we should all have been involved by authority in vortices. In fact, the vortices have been exploded, and the Newtonian principle of gravitation is now more firmly established, on the basis of reason, than it would be were the government to step in, and to make it an article of necessary faith. Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them. It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature. […]
Ironically, Lawless noted, all the attention to contraception at the moment may end up boosting the overall public standing of the 2010 health care law. Free preventive health care, whether it’s a cancer screening or the pill, may well become as popular as provisions like allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ health plans until age 26. – 2012: The year of ‘birth control moms’?
Religious conservatives, their right-wing supporters and their Republican allies have finally overstepped and what played out last week was proof. The Susan G. Komen catastrophe, starring right-wing ideologue Karen Handel, now seems like foreshadowing.
The Tea Party was the germination, which inspired the Koch Bros, Dick Armey and an explosion of political opportunists, beginning with Rush, Sean and the wingnut radio bunch, leaching on to the energy. Well-funded and stoked on anger, Republicans harnessed that energy, but couldn’t control it, including in Congress.
Because of the 2010 political malpractice by the Democratic Party, state legislatures turned Republican in record numbers, unleashing a wave of anti-women’s freedom campaigns that culminated most recently in Virginia.
Representing a crescendo of events over months that turned into years, in walks Pres. Obama with his free contraceptive mandate and we were off to the First Amendment races, which has tripped up every religious conservative, no matter the party, and right-wing Republicans, as well as moderately perceived advocates, in droves.
The Catholic Church is telling women we shouldn’t use birth control.
Religious conservatives are holding hearings on the issue without a single female witness.
Joe Scarborough compared Obama’s mandate to a federal mandate for female deacons to be ordained in Southern Baptists churches. Even after challenged by his co-host Mika Brzezinski, he dug in; when I challenged him in a column Scarborough unraveled.
Republicans like Joe Scarborough and religious conservatives, represented so well by Rick Santorum, who is now caterwauling about Obama’s policies aren’t based on the Bible, are entitled to their own ideological beliefs and opinions. They are not entitled to their own facts. If Mika Brzezinski’s opinion was valued equally to Scarborough’s the discussion might have ended differently.
Rick Santorum is bellyaching because of a media double-standard he sees regarding his Super PAC sugar daddy versus Jeremiah Wright.
Pres. Obama can be called a “secret Muslim,” be forced to give a speech on race and religion, but Mitt Romney’s Mormonism can’t be discussed and his spokesperson gets away with stonewalling the press on a subject Romney himself opened up, baptismal of the dead, euphemistically called “proxy baptism”.
People are aware that the Mormon Church and Romney benefactor Frank VanderSloot poured massive funding into the Proposition 8 fiasco in California that was just overturned? How many know the heavy hand of billionaire Frank VanderSloot and the threats he uses to silence critics?
From an important investigative piece by Glenn Greenwald:
Most of those who have been successfully bullied out of their free speech rights are reluctant to talk about what happened for fear of further retribution. But now, VanderSloot may have picked the wrong person to bully.
Jody May-Chang is an independent journalist and an LGBT spokesperson in Boise. By coincidence, she was one of the local reporters who interviewed me last weekend when I spoke to the annual Bill of Rights dinner of the ACLU in Idaho. At the end of the interview, she mentioned to me the series of threats issued to local LGBT journalists and bloggers by VanderSloot. Unbeknownst to May-Chang at the time, she, too, had been targeted for the crime of speaking critically of the Idaho CEO.
What are we saying if we let the traditional media and cable news-tainment show hosts purposefully ignore important facts even when challenged? Or we refuse to question religious institutions and individuals who are flexing their power across the political spectrum in ways that make Jerry Falwell’s dreams seem modest?
If we’re not going to ask questions after a politician says something that would lead any curious person to probe further, then what’s the point of the modern day religious test?
If we don’t want specifics and an honest conversation about religion, are we saying we don’t care what your religion is as long as you believe in God?
Nothing impacts public policy across this country where women are concerned greater than the interference of religious institutions in public policy matters. We’ve also found that religious institutions have taken for granted the ignorance of politicians and the public. Through the exercise of watching the shock when women like myself and many others challenge them that the First Amendment swings both ways, we’ve found religious conservatives, our cable talking heads and the media don’t think that’s important.
Religious conservatism also interferes with our diplomacy, the use of soft power and the focus on women’s roles, which Secy. Clinton has brought to the forefront through women’s empowerment being at the heart of stabilizing developing nations. As I’ve written innumerable times, it’s another aspect of the Hillary Effect.
But as long as we’re cherry-picking religious questions, is a Jewish president out because he’s not a Christian or because of the offensive notion of possible duel loyalties?
All we need to know is the person is god-fearing, right?
Oh, and not a Muslim.
Sean Hannity still brings up Jeremiah Wright when talking about Barack Obama. Following right-wing radio talking points, Rick Santorum did it this week.
Rick Santorum’s bag man thinks it’s funny to play Old Coot and say women are just too emotional about birth control. Take an aspirin, honey, preferably between your knees.
Religious conservatives like Virginia’s Gov. Bob McDonnell and Republicans across this country, state by state, have decided it’s a good idea to assault a woman with a transvaginal probe when she’s in crisis.
Everyone’s faith is a little bit kooky to an unbeliever. Watch Bill Maher’s “Religulous”, now available online free to see, and you’ll be challenged. I’m sure many people would find my meditation, backed by an Episcopalian and Christian foundation, not only non-traditional but blasphemous for the way I see Jesus Christ after a lifetime of contemplation.
It’s pretty clear after the latest argument on contraception that we could not do any worse with an atheist in the Oval Office.
That won’t happen in America, because religious conservatives and the institutions that back them control the political and legislative processes, as well as the politicians who win electionsand the media who reports on it all.
That’s the system Pres. Obama and his administration challenged with the contraceptive mandate, which is no doubt bolstered by polling proving the majority of women in this country stand behind him.
Religious conservatives and their allies in the media and news-tainment shows know they’ve lost the biggest battle of all due to a constitutional carve-out that was as ingenious to create as it was to proffer. It’s clear they don’t intend to go down quietly.
It’s coming during Rick Santorum’s speech at CPAC.
This cannot end well for him, particularly doing this claiming to be a Christian. And it might not end well for the rest of us either. Barack Obama has gone to war with Christians’ consciences and he is perverting God’s word in the process to get his way on public policy. – The Perversion of the Words of Our Lord Jesus Christ by the Sinner Barack H. Obama, by Erick Erickson
Erick Erickson reveals one of the fundamental problems with Republicanism today. It’s not conservative at all anymore.
In a rambling, self-importantly arrogant post, Erickson pontificates on what he thinks he knows about being a Christian through a literal analysis of the Bible. Then he stands in judgment over Pres. Obama.
The self-righteous never see irony coming.
There is nothing Christian in Erickson’s harangue against Pres. Obama. There is also nothing conservative about it.
Conservatism has a measure of grounding when you listen to analysis of it from people who don’t wrap their religion through their conservative ideology.
A religious conservative can be against abortion. But an ideological conservative, while being against abortion and not wanting to fund it, cannot simultaneously take a person’s liberty away by forcing pregnancy on a woman when natural law protects her right to personal autonomy.
The very notion of conservatism is rooted in personal liberty. Whether religious conservatives like it or not, to be true to conservatism, they must honor that liberty. Today, they do not.
Any conservative with intellectual or political integrity would understand that conservatism of any depth must be rooted in the fundamental idea that interrupting the freedoms of any person through the intrusion of government, whether federal or state, is abridging a person’s autonomy in a manner that is the anti-thesis of conservatism.
Religious conservatism or fundamentalist-based Republicanism is actually a self-righteous marketing attempt to make people like Erickson and his ilk think they are on higher ground and have the ultimate interpretation of right and wrong. You hear it through Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and the rest of the self-righteous radio crowd.
It’s the blatant hypocrisy to claim to be a conservative, but think religious dogma should hold more sway than an individual who’s privacy and personal freedoms are innate to being a person in the first place.
Conservatism without religion can make sense.
Add religion, however, and conservatism becomes authoritarian in nature, relegating women to non-persons, second class citizens and slaves, because the state or federal government, through religious dictates, is now in charge.
Conservatism’s very nature is about doing less, leaving the individual alone to prosper and live without interference, which certainly should include women.
However, since Ronald Reagan invited the “Moral Majority,” which was neither moral or a majority then or now as it exists in other forms, conservatism was bastardized into something that now includes a campaign to take over the domain of a woman’s very body through means of the state or federal government.
Erick Erickson sees no problem with this, because he’s a religious conservative, not a conservative.
You can be religious and you can be a conservative, but once you put the two together in an ideological philosophy you lose the moorings of anything that has integral grounding in what conservatism actually means.
Not even Ron Paul passes this test as a Libertarian. He’s said before that he’s against abortion, because it’s violent, which is perfectly acceptable, but that he’d allow the states to decide the law governing abortions. This fails the basic autonomy test and the very notion of liberty that’s in Libertarianism, which he proved in an interview with Piers Morgan.
The biggest impediment to curtailing abortions is the refusal of religious conservatives and fundamentalist Republicans to accept the primary component to being a person, which is the body that houses the soul, assuming it exists, is something over which no other, certainly no politician, clergy or the state, has control.
This is about personal autonomy and living freely without any dependencies, the first component of personhood. It’s not abortion, but includes it, because religious fundamentalists are using political means to wage a war against the very notion of women’s individual freedom.
If people believing in true liberty don’t start taking religious conservatives on, whatever party they are in, over their fundamentalism, women’s autonomy won’t be sacrosanct one day.
This includes taking on people like Pres. Obama when he decides that a safe pharmaceutical like Plan B can be used as a stick to the contraceptive carrot that came afterward, because women’s individual freedoms remain a bargaining chip for politicians and their supporters.
The ultimate example of this was seen through the Susan G. Komen fiasco this past week, when Komen decided to make ideology more important than the health of women, especially poor women, who have been a political football since the Hyde Amendment. Yes, Pres. Obama used poor women as a football too, and he did it through the religious conservative playbook that created Hyde in the first place.
(Source: taylormarsh.com)
Social conservatism, religious conservatism and fundamentalist Republicanism is not conservative at all.
The answer is simple. Because no Republican or Democratic politician has the courage to challenge any church today. E.J. Dionne reveals why:
That is why it is so remarkable that he utterly botched the admittedly difficult question of how contraceptive services should be treated under the new health care law.
His administration mishandled this decision not once but twice. In the process, Obama threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus and strengthened the hand of those inside the Church who had originally sought to derail the health care law.
… Speaking as a Catholic, I wish the Church would be more open on the contraception question. But speaking as an American liberal who believes that religious pluralism imposes certain obligations on government, I think the Church’s leaders had a right to ask for broader relief from a contraception mandate that would require it to act against its own teachings. The administration should have done more to balance the competing liberty interests here.
What Mr. Dionne reveals is that “Catholic allies” are more important than the integrity of protecting the individual person against the institution. The female individual having no lobbying crew or elite to protect her, for which she relies on the government, because only at the highest levels can a woman’s individual civil rights be secured. “Competing liberty interests” doesn’t address the lack of power an individual person has against institutions, seen in this debate by the Catholic Church who wants to deny reproductive health care to women, which hits rural and poor women directly.
Contrary to the fantasy that the Obama administration waging “an attack on their religious freedom,” an argument Russ Douthat makes today in the New York Times, what Pres. Obama has decided gives power to the individual over institutions.
Nothing is in higher keeping with the founders’ principles. It also is what Republicans and other conservatives, including Democrats, tout all the time, except where women are concerned. Then all of a sudden freedom it is just for men.
One woman’s privacy is more important than any religious institution’s prerogatives.
This highlights the biggest scourge in our politics and that is allowing religion and faith to have entrance into the debate in the first place. Thanks to Ronald Reagan and the “Moral Majority,” which was neither then or now, a religious litmus test has entered our political and policy landscape.
In thousands of parishes this weekend, Catholic priests read a version of the following letter to their congregation denouncing this decision as an attack on their religious freedom. Each bishop personally sent the letter out, and so there were some local variations. Here’s the one read in the Phoenix Archdiocese. Here’s another from the Bishop of Trenton. What follows is from the Bishop of Marquette… – Business Insider
I’m a rebel Episcopalian that now relies on daily meditation as my spiritual bedrock. I won’t take a back seat to any fundamentalist or evangelical or Catholic on spirituality. However, any person’s preferences in private should have no sway in public policy matters.
Since the Catholic Church is clearly encouraging it’s parishioners to wage a political campaign against this decision there should be substantive questions raised as to why this religious organization deserves protected status under the IRS code.
From Catholic News in November 2011:
“The law says that organizations exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, which includes charities and churches, may not participate or intervene in any political campaign on behalf of, or in opposition to, any candidate for public office,” the Internal Revenue Service says on its website.
That means no endorsements, checklists, guides promoting one candidate over another or sample ballots by tax-exempt parishes and organizations or their publications.
But it does not prevent religious leaders or members of other tax-exempt organizations from speaking out on the issues, organizing voter registration drives or nonpartisan educational forums or publishing candidates’ responses to a questionnaire as long as the questions cover a broad range of issues and do not reflect any bias.
As you’ll see from the letter below, provided by Business Insider, there is nothing nonpartisan about it.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I write to you concerning an alarming and serious matter that negatively impacts the Church in the United States directly, and that strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all citizens of any faith. The federal government, which claims to be “of, by, and for the people,” has just been dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people — the Catholic population — and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last week that almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees’ health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include those “services” in the health policies they write. And almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies.
In so ruling, the Obama Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. And as a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). The Obama Administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply.
We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made second class citizens. We are already joined by our brothers and sisters of all faiths and many others of good will in this important effort to regain our religious freedom. Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America’s cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture, only to have their posterity stripped of their God given rights. In generations past, the Church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred rights and duties. I hope and trust she can count on this generation of Catholics to do the same. Our children and grandchildren deserve nothing less.
And therefore, I would ask of you two things. First, as a community of faith we must commit ourselves to prayer and fasting that wisdom and justice may prevail, and religious liberty may be restored. Without God, we can do nothing; with God, nothing is impossible. Second, I would also recommend visiting www.usccb.org/conscience,to learn more about this severe assault on religious liberty, and how to contact Congress in support of legislation that would reverse the Obama Administration’s decision.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Alexander K. Sample
Most Reverend Alexander K. Sample
Bishop of Marquette
